Decoding Literary Theories

   I Knowing the Oriental  The first part of the first chapter, “The Scope of Orientalism,” in Edward Said’s book Orientalism, is ‘Knowing the Oriental’. In this chapter, Said explains how Western knowledge about the East was closely connected to political power and imperial control. To illustrate this, he begins with a speech delivered in 1910 by the British politician Arthur James Balfour.  At that time, Britain had been ruling Egypt for many years, but some members of the British Parliament were starting to question whether Britain had the right to remain there. Balfour defended British occupation of Egypt. Interestingly, he did not justify British rule by emphasizing military strength or economic advantage. Instead, he argued that Britain had the authority to rule Egypt because it understood Egypt better than the Egyptians themselves. Balfour refers to Egypt as part of the “Orient,” a term widely used in Europe to describe Eastern societies. He presents Egypt as...

  Jacques Derrida (1930–2004) was a French philosopher who deeply influenced modern literary theory and philosophy. Born in Algeria during French colonial rule, he later became one of the leading voices of post-structuralism. Derrida is best known for developing deconstruction , a way of reading texts that shows how meanings are never fixed, final, or fully stable. His famous 1966 lecture, “Structure, Sign and Play in the Discourse of the Human Sciences,” questioned the idea that systems of thought have a secure center or absolute truth. Some of his other major works include Of Grammatology (1967), where he critiques Western philosophy’s preference for speech over writing; Writing and Difference (1967), a collection of essays exploring philosophy and literature; and Speech and Phenomena (1967), which examines language and consciousness. Through these works, Derrida transformed the way we read texts and think about meaning. His ideas continue to influence literary criticism, fe...